Let's save Battell Hall from destruction at Middlebury College.

As students, alums, and friends of the college, we request that President Baucom and the Board of Trustees call off plans to demolish Battell Hall, the first-year residence hall built in 1950 and expanded in 1955.

Battell is a place where countless students first arrive on campus to join the Middlebury community.  It has a low scale and a pleasant, ivy-covered exterior that is welcoming to new students:  fitting for what is perhaps the friendliest place to live on campus.  Students quickly bond with their classmates in Battell—often forging lifelong friendships or even meeting their spouse.  Students also gain an affinity for Battell Hall because as first-year students—usually just a summer away from high school—Battell is where they live as they begin to develop as adults and, in many ways, it helps to mold a student’s residential college experience.  After all, saying that you lived in Battell, or more specifically what hall you lived on, is shorthand for a part of your identity at Middlebury.  Older alums sometimes stop by to visit their old rooms and share stories of their time on campus.  In turn, Battell Hall is part of the emotional connection that students and alums have to Middlebury College.

Saving Battell is also in line with the identity of the college, a place known for both environmental leadership and beautiful, historic campus architecture.  Middlebury has made an important commitment to environmental sustainability, but there is inevitably a good deal of waste produced when tearing down a building.  If kept, Battell could continue to support the school as a residence hall and offices—or part of an arts complex or some other purpose.  Also, one of Middlebury’s great assets, useful recruiting tools, and notable characteristics is its attractive, cohesive campus buildings—limestone and marble structures primarily in Georgian and revivalist architectural styles.  There is room for more current styles on campus, but that does not require destroying a more traditional building in a prominent, very visible location at the boundary of two campus quads.  And yes, Battell deserves an internal upgrade, but this could be done without destroying a functional and aesthetically pleasing exterior.

Preserving Battell need not get in the way of the laudable goal of creating an arts agora quad.  Indeed, keeping it would likely make the arts agora work better.  A quad works best when defined on four sides.  (The campus’s main quad is a good example of that.)  However, this north campus quad is currently bound by Le Chateau on the north, Johnson and Wright on the east, and Battell on the west; but the quad is open to College Street to the south.  So, one potential site to consider for the new museum is that large space between Carr and Sunderland that could form the southern side of the quad.  Building there would better enclose this arts agora and better create an “outdoor room” while providing the museum with easy public access along College Street.  Another alternative is colocating the new museum with the existing Middlebury College Museum of Art, which has plenty of space for expansion.  These alternative sites would retain the residential nature of Battell Beach, the large quad surrounded by Forest, Pearsons, and the new and old Battell Halls—an area that has long served as a backyard for students and that is essentially free of more publicly-oriented buildings, like those for academics, athletics, and the arts. 

Middlebury College should continue to change, improve, and innovate, and not every campus building should be restored or conserved indefinitely, but preserving Battell is consistent with Middlebury’s environmental values and arts facility expansion goals.  If we lose Battell, we will lose more than a building.  We will lose some connection with Middlebury—and the bond of shared experience across generations.  We thank President Baucom and the Board for their leadership and commitment to the college, including their work to make physical improvements to the campus—and urge them to save Battell from demolition.